Touchalize makes video ads interactive, and can even make you the star

One of the startups to grab our attention at LeWeb last month was Phonitive and its product Touchalize, which makes videos interactive in some interesting ways.

Designed with marketing in mind, Touchalize is touchscreen-focused and allows end users to manipulate video. Watching an ad for a new car but want to see what it would look like in the color you’d actually want to buy it in? With a couple of taps of the screen, the car’s color will have changed, with everything else around it in the video unaltered.

Want to star in the video? Your face can be added directly in, pasted on top of that of a character in the ad. Another tap of the screen could bring up detailed specs for the vehicle, and even let you book a test drive at a local dealership – all from within the video.

For a flavor of what’s possible, here’s a video of the demo Touchalize was offering at LeWeb, shot by TV station France 3 Paris.

There are more examples in this French language video by BlogNTTV. (Skip straight to the 2:15 mark).

France-based Phonitive is pitching Touchalize as a marketing tool for a wide variety of industries.Viral sharing of videos is being positioned as a strength here, as once people have added themselves into a video, they’re more likely to want to share it with their friends, or so the theory goes. Analytics are available, tracking customer behavior, geography, the objects people touch, how people interact with videos and the choices they make.

This isn’t the only interactive video tool out there. WireWax, which we’ve previously covered, offers a tagging-based service that lets users find out about products, people and other objects in videos by clicking on them.

Phonitive was founded in Toulouse in 2010, and Touchalize was a finalist at the LeWeb startup competition.

Martin Bryant Editor-in-Chief at The Next Web. You can find him on Twitter, subscribe to him on Facebook, circle him on Google+ and visit his personal site. He's based in Manchester, UK and has a thing for quirky American music and Japanese video games.